


Dedication

by HermioneSpencer



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, oneshotcophine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 13:53:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7465908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HermioneSpencer/pseuds/HermioneSpencer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Delphine and Cosima meet.<br/>They will meet each other again, someday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dedication

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Reader,
> 
> I wrote this piece for the [ One-Shot Cophine Fanfic Review](http://oneshotcophine.tumblr.com/contestinfo) that I came across on Tumblr. I've never done anything like this before, but I do adore the Orphan Black community; it is the most welcoming fandom I have ever been a part of, so I suggest all of you go and write something, too! Make it a party ;)
> 
> Love,  
> HermioneSpencer
> 
>  
> 
> **Cosima, Delphine, and the OB universe are copyrighted to BBC America and affiliates; therefore, I claim no ownership of these characters, nor shall I make any pecuniary gain; the following writing is intended for entertainment purposes only.**

_I dedicate this work to my guardian angel, whom I met only once, and I have accepted I might not meet again.  Without her, I may never have made it home.  Thank you._

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

 

**“Suicide at Huxley Station.”**

Ever since reading those words in the newspaper, Cosima had thought a lot about time.  What it was… how it worked.  It should have been simple- it _had_ been simple, up until that day.  One second, sixty seconds, one minute, sixty minutes, 24 hours in a solar day.  23 hours and 56 minutes in a sidereal day.  That is what Cosima had been _taught_ , that is what Cosima had _learnt_ , and that is what Cosima had _understood_.  Until the day that Beth killed herself by jumping under a train at Huxley Station.

No, since she had read those words, time had become less and less understandable.  How was it possible to wake up, eat her breakfast, get dressed, and go to work, arriving fifteen minutes late because she _lost track of time_ , but then the moment she read those words, one second (9,192,631,770 vibrations of the caesium atom) had no longer been something that she _lost track of_ easily.

In one second, a bullet can travel 900 metres and penetrate a target, a toad’s tongue can catch a worm, and a honeybee can flap its wings 200 times. 

How is it, that one second, such a tiny portion of the day, can become the most _important_ part of the day when there are 86399 others, in which far more interesting things can happen?  One second becomes the most _relevant_.

In one second, Cosima read a sentence that sent her already ailing body into a deep pit that she was sure she would never be able to get out of.

_Beth killed herself._

She hadn’t believed it at first.  She had spent a whole sixty seconds rereading a sentence that had taken her one second to read before.  She then proceeded to reread the whole news article multiple times too, spending at least an hour (3600 seconds) just staring at the picture they had of her in the article.

 _Why did they choose that picture?  That’s a horrible picture of her.  She_ hated _that day.  She may be smiling, but that was the day that Beth had the family dinner, smashed the wine glass, and told Paul to get out of her house in front of her whole family.  Of course, he came back a week later, but she had been_ miserable _when that photo was taken._

_Who chose that picture?_

_It must have been Paul.  He had never been sensitive to her feelings._

_I should have stopped him going back to her._

Part of her wondered why nobody had called her to tell her about her death.  Beth was her _sister_ and she had died _five days ago_ , and _nobody had told her about it._   Not even Paul.  She was angry, to say the least.

She had asked Alison why, and the answer she had received had made her feel even shittier.

“We didn’t want to make it worse for you, Cosima.  You’re already sick, and we thought we would wait until after your last exam to tell you!  You’re so close to finishing school, we didn’t want to scupper your chances of doing so well.”

“What?  What the heck would you have told me once I’d done the exam?  That Beth had jumped that morning, or that she had died _a whole two weeks ago?_   How did you think that was going to go down, Alison?  Do you know how fucking _awful_ I feel right now, that she _died_ almost a week ago now, and I couldn’t even mourn for her with everyone else?  You know what?  It doesn’t matter.  I was going to fail the exam anyway, now I just get to fail it with the added knowledge that my whole family thinks I’m too weak to know about _my own sister’s_ _death!_ ”

She had hung up after that.

With just under a week to go until her final exam, Cosima was terrified, both for her results and her own health.

Part of her anger at Alison had been her trying to reflect her frustration onto them; she was sure that she was not going to live much longer.  Her last appointment with her doctor had told her that much.  She hadn’t told her family yet, but it wasn’t to protect them.  In truth, she just didn’t know how to say it.

The exam, she felt, went terribly.

Being all alone in California at the University of Berkeley had taken its toll, and it showed because Cosima stopped taking care of herself.  About a week after her exam and about three weeks after Beth’s death, Cosima found herself stumbling home from a local bar at about five o’clock in the afternoon.  She wasn’t _very_ drunk, but she was unsteady enough to need to hold onto the railings of the buildings so that she didn’t waddle into the road…

She had to admit it: she was a mess.  She hadn’t washed in at least four days, not being able to find it in herself to get out of the clothes she had worn for the same amount of time, and actually clean the dirt and grime off her skin.  The most nutritional thing she had eaten in that time was some tempura from a Japanese takeaway, and even then, the nutritional value had been pretty much imaginary. 

People in the street avoided her, either giving her a wide berth or spotting her from further away and crossing the street immediately.

Cosima almost didn’t blame them, but she had a tendency to blame everyone for things that were her fault, so she didn’t help herself by glowering at those who walked past her.

How dare they assume she was disgusting, probably homeless?  Who gave them the right to assume _anything?_

Cosima felt the first cough rising up through her body about _twenty seconds_ before it actually arrived.  It tickled and itched and clawed its way up from her lungs to her throat like bile mixed with glue, the thick consistency of the blood brought with the cough making her gasp. 

She had to lean against the railings and cough herself blind before her body calmed down a little.  The blood caught in her throat when she breathed in, and she was caught in a vicious cycle of _cough, gasp, choke, repeat._   The red haze that took over her eyesight could have been any number of things, but to Cosima, it felt as if the blood had filled up her body like an overflowing blood bucket, and now it was leaking into her eyes, stopping her from being able to see where she was going.

About 600 seconds into her coughing fit, Cosima was kneeling on the floor, blood dripping from her mouth to her hands, from her hands to the concrete, from concrete to the sweaty, bloody hell that awaited her below, which could hardly be worse than the hell she was living in now.

 _My sister killed herself.  She never told me just how bad it was.  I was never there for her, she could never tell me just how badly she was suffering, I was too focussed on_ me, me, me _and she killed herself because nobody understood and nobody ever could see just how much she hurt.  But the worst thing is, nobody ever_ tried _to.  Not even me, Beth’s sister.  I’m dying and it’s awful because everyone wants to help but they_ can’t _.  Beth was dying, and it’s worse because everyone_ could _have helped but I made sure that nobody was listening to her._

_This sickness in my body is killing me now, but it already murdered Beth._

Cosima was now practically lying on the ground, her temple pressed against the cool of the concrete and being forced down by the _guilt_ that weighed down on her from above.

She needed to get up, she needed to get back to her apartment, and she needed to consider seriously, where she was in her life right now.  Then drink some of that bourbon she knew she had in the cabinet.

But she found that it may have just been easier to lie there forever.

Who cared anyway?  She just looked like a dirty homeless woman.  If she died now, it would only be easier than dying in a few months’ time because of this illness.

Her plans for self-destruction on the street were scuppered by the feeling of hands on her body, long, soft fingers checking her pulse and a soft voice bringing her back from the pit inside the pit she had fallen into, sweaty from the proximity to the Earth’s core.

It was a woman.  She was saying something, but Cosima couldn’t hear her properly.

It crossed her mind that she simply wasn’t listening to the woman.  She was good at ignoring other people.

_“…Can you hear me?  Madame, can you hear me...”_

Cosima’s eyes swirled about through the red haze, looking for the mouth that the voice was coming from.  Maybe the words would make more sense if she could visualise them.

“Can you see me?”

 _What an odd thing to ask.  Of_ course _I can see you.  You’re too beautiful to miss.  I feel your beauty in my neck, through your fingers as you check my pulse.  You are fresh and beautiful and of_ course _I can see you._

“Yes,” she mumbled, almost incoherently.

“I am going to ring an ambulance for you.  You are bleeding everywhere,” she said, and although Cosima was somewhat addled in her brain through alcohol and lack of oxygen, she recognised the accent of a Frenchwoman.

“No, no, please don’t… I don’t have the money, I can’t pay for it.  I-” Cosima stuttered, finally forcing herself into interacting with the real world again, “I just need to go home,” she said.

_Home.  What even was that, anymore?_

After a long pause, the woman spoke again.

“You are in a bad way, are you sure that I cannot pay for you?”

“No, no absolutely not, no,” Cosima’s voice grew in strength and she forced herself to sit up properly in the middle of the street, regarding this woman.

The woman was biting her lip softly, and kneeling next to Cosima so that their heads were almost level with each other, giving the brunette a good view of the woman before her.  Now that she could see properly, without craning her neck too much, Cosima was sure this woman’s face was sent to her as a reward for her getting back up.  Blonde, curly-haired and French.  Baller.

“Very well then.  Please, how can I help you otherwise?”

“Um, if you could just help me- help me stand up, or something, I’d really appreciate that.  I need to get home, I need to- to sort myself out.”

If the woman in front of her was surprised that she had some sort of home to go to, she didn’t show it.  Instead, she helped her stand up, and once again, Cosima had hold of the railings.  The woman did not let go of her, though.  She still had an arm under Cosima’s, wrapping around her back and supporting her.  “What are you doing?” Cosima asked, possibly quite rudely.  The blonde woman simply smiled.

“I am helping you home.  How far away are we?”

“No, you don’t need to do that, I’m like a minute away, don’t bother,” Cosima huffed, not wanting this attention.  Being sick made everyone want to help and it was awful.  It made her even sicker.

She couldn’t argue; the woman helped her to her front door.  She was partly glad; she would most likely have fallen again without her, seeing as her legs were jelly-like and unable to support her weight.  The woman didn’t stop there; she helped her into her apartment, too. 

Cosima was exhausted.  She wanted to talk, but her breathing was too laboured to achieve anything other than giving her just the bare minimum of oxygen that she needed.  She was sat down on her sofa by the blond woman, and she felt her coat being taken off gently. 

She sat there and felt her eyes flutter closed, the warmth of her apartment coddling her.  Cosima’s eyes snapped open again when she felt something touch her face.  It was a warm flannel, and the woman in front of her was _washing_ her face.

_Oh, I must be covered in blood.  Wonderful._

She wanted to protest, but she didn’t have the strength.  She felt her hands undergo the same treatment: the blood being wiped away by the warm, damp flannel.

The woman had a focused look on her face, and whilst she was gentle, she wasn’t tender in her actions.  _Professional_ , Cosima thought to herself as her eyes closed gently once again.

She was roused again when the woman shook her gently, asking her something.

“Madame?”

Cosima made a strange garbled noise in response, a moan of some sort.  Maybe on another day, Cosima would have had the self-respect to be ashamed of the noise, but she wasn’t today.  The pained groan may have communicated in just how much pain Cosima was in herself.

“I said, are you ready to get up again?  I’m taking you to your bedroom, _oui?_ ”

Cosima shook her head sleepily, her head falling back against her chest when she could no longer hold it up.  There was no way she could stand, that was obvious to the both of them.

“I can’t… I think I’ll just… sleep here, tonight…” she mumbled, moving her body so that she lay down on the sofa.  The Frenchwoman sighed, but before Cosima could see anything else, she was asleep again.

 

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

 

She awoke on her bed, the sheets slightly smelly and a little bit dirty.  Cosima’s bare feet could feel little grains of _somethings_ against her toes, and she tried to brush them away with her feet.  Unsuccessful, she gave up, instead, rising to a sitting position.

She was in her underwear and an oversized top she used for sleeping.

Confused, and only just beginning to remember the slightly hazy events of what had happened, Cosima slid slowly out of the bed, padding softly into the living space.

Her coat was hung up, the bloody flannel was clean and drying on her radiator, and on the kitchen countertop, there was a pan of soup, still slightly warm.

There was no trace of the woman who had made it all happen.

 

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

 

Ten years (315,360,000 seconds) later, Delphine read 33 words in a dedication of a book on evolutionary development her brother gave her for her birthday.  She had thought it would be interesting.

Now she had a name of the author, and a small picture on the back of the fly cover to match… Cosima Niehaus.

 _We_ will _meet again.  I’m on my way, Cosima._


End file.
